{At an impromptu news conference in Kampala on Friday, the speaker of the South Sudanese Legislative Assembly Manesseh Magok Rundial said his president, Salva Kiir, had never written to President Museveni, requesting for military support as government officials here claim.
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The surprise revelation puts new pressure on the government to produce the letter and contradicts earlier assertions of a formal request of military support from Juba, capital of South Sudan, made by President Museveni and his army officials. Angered by this revelation, some MPs are trying to sponsor a parliamentary push for the recall of UPDF from South Sudan.
Magok told journalists at Parliament that there was no formal communication between Kiir and Museveni in regard to the hurried deployment of UPDF troops to help SPLA government forces to put down a rebellion led by Dr Riek Machar, the former vice president.
“What I know is that our president [Salva Kiir] has never written any letter to President Museveni requesting for support [in this particular conflict], if such a request was made, it might have been a telephone conversation,” Magok said.
Magok convened the press conference after a long wait for the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) Speaker Margaret Nantongo Zziwa, whom he wanted to brief about the state of affairs back home. Magok’s revelation contradicts what the junior minister for Defence, Gen Jeje Odongo, and army chief Katumba Wamala told Parliament’s Defence and Internal Affairs committee recently.
“On January 9 when the committee first sat, I told them that the letter didn’t exist because I had information from [the ministry of [Defence] that Kiyonga was travelling to Juba to try and get Kiir to write the letter,” Kyadondo East MP Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda told The Observer on Friday.
Hours before Magok’s delegation met the committee on Thursday, Gen Jeje Odongo laboured to convince the committee that the said letter existed. Asked to produce it, Jeje said he couldn’t possibly have access to communication between two heads of state.
He was eventually chased from the committee. Magok’s revelation threatens to discredit government in regard to the deployment of Ugandan troops.
“This information coming from the speaker [of South Sudan Parliament] is the best confirmation we can get. It is now clear that Parliament and the whole country was deceived by the government,” Hassan Kaps Fungaroo, the shadow minister for Defence, told The Observer on Friday.
The Observer
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